Zojirushi Rice Cooker Pasta

I am a proud owner of a Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker & Warmer. This brilliant work of art allows me to put water and rice into a Teflon (ie: easy to clean) pot, press a button, and have perfectly cooked rice some time later (I am not sure exactly how long it takes, I leave it and go do other things then come back when it beeps, if not later).

The nice thing about a rice cooker is that all of the water you put in it is contained within the device. This means that as the water boils, it doesn't evaporate off but instead sticks around to cool near the top and fall back into the pot. What this does is allows you to put exactly as much water into the pot as will be absorbed by the rice so when it's done the rice is the exact texture you want it and there is nothing to strain.

Enter Pasta. I like pasta but I always hate having to stir it (so the noodles on top don't get dry) and having to strain it afterwards (dirty a strainer, or straining lid). So I thought to myself, why not just dump some pasta into the rice cooker with some water and see what happens? Which is exactly what I did.

For my first experiment I put in 1-cup medium shells and 2 cups water. I really had no idea going into this how much water is absorbed by pasta but more is better since worst case scenario I end up with a complex carbohydrate soup / mush that I can mix in with some pasta sauce for flavoring and call a meal. Once the ingredients were added I closed the lid, set the rice cooker to "quick cook", and pressed go.

Some time later (not sure how long) it played it's little song to me and I went to find out what I had created. Amazingly, the noodles were just right in terms of hard/softness (at least for my taste) but it still had some water in the pot which I had to strain. At this point I transferred the noodles & water into a dinner bowl, strained the little water left with a spoon holding the noodles back (I later used the spoon to eat with, so no extra dish here) and added some pasta sauce from a jar in the refrigerator.

I will be trying this again later today with 1.5 cups water to see if I can get similar results without the need of straining and I will post my results here.